Rojas avoided the temptation of opening his sprint too early on the slightly downhill finishing straight, and instead bided his time until room developed between Poels and the barriers on the righthand side of the road. With 50 metres to go, he squeezed through the gap and came past Poels to take the win.

With no fewer than seven climbs on the menu, and with high speeds the order of the day on the rolling run-in to the finish, a number of the fast men in the peloton were missing from the sprint and there were some unexpected names in the thick of the action in the finale. Fabian Wegmann (Garmin-Barracuda) came home in third ahead of Arthur Vichot (FDJ-BigMat) and Daniele Ratto (Liquigas-Cannondale), while Ryder Hesjedal finished 6th.

"I wasn’t expecting to race here because I had suffered a serious crash last week at Gent-Wevelgem," said Rojas. "I still have much pain in my back and was really doubtful about taking the start or not. Eventually we decided to come here, especially as a preparation before next week to help Alejandro [Valverde] in the Ardennes, and... look what happened. When you don’t expect it, you win.

"When we entered the final straight I saw a small gap on the right side I could barely pass through. I thought: 'I'll either get past or crash'. I didn’t care about crashing, because we take so many risks on the road that danger comes from everywhere, but everything turned out well.

"This victory is the fruit of all work I did during the winter; I’m a rider who needs victories, and when you’re always coming close and victories don’t arrive, doubts grow up even more. After the bad streak in the start of the season, with so many problems, such a victory does really well for my morale."

With todays's victory Rojas leads the general classification at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco after the opening stage, the first time he's worn a leader's jersey since the 2007 Vuelta a Murcia. Wout Poels and Fabian Wegmann are second and third overall, tied on time with Rojas.

The stage’s preamble was dominated by a lengthy breakaway featuring Davide Mucelli (Utensilnord Named) and David De La Fuente (Caja Rural), who jumped away on the day’s opening climb, the Alto Humaran. The pair quickly established a five-minute lead over the peloton, which only began to come down when Euskaltel-Euskadi and Astana hit the front of the bunch on the Alto del Suceso after 80km.

From that point on, the duo’s advantage was whittled down incrementally, and the process was accelerated still further on the Alto de Beci inside the final 50km, when Rabobank started forcing the pace with Michael Matthews’ sprint in mind. De La Fuente and Mucelli were ultimately swept up by the chasers on the approach to the day’s final climb, the Alto de San Comse.

A crash as the climb began caused some ripples in the main field, but the principal overall contenders managed to pick their way around the danger. On the climb proper, Wesley Sulzberger (GreenEdge) clipped off the front, but the Australian was brought to heel on the descent as the pace ratcheted up towards the finish.

A number of escape attempts were thwarted during the final run-in to the line, the most intriguing of which was a move featuring Daniel Navarro (Saxo Bank) and Tour of Lombardy winner Oliver Zaugg (RadioShack-Nissan), but the pair were unable to prevent the inevitable bunch finish.

Inside the final kilometre, it was the lime green colours of Liqugias-Cannondale which massed on the front end of the peloton as they looked to lead out their man Ratto for the finishing sprint. The Italian duly put in a plucky bid to take the honours, but he faded in the final 100 metres as Poels launched his effort.

Fortune favoured the last man to strike, however, as the canny Rojas waited as late as he possibly could before rattling over an explosive sprint to secure his first victory of the year, and the overall lead ahead of stage two to Vitoria-Gasteiz.